The following articles are to be incorporated into the Apprentices’ Ordinance or in some new ordinance.
[1] First, from now on, anyone who secretly pays off his tailor or his innkeeper with his master’s bread or flour, which has happened in the past, shall not be held for honest but rather for dishonest. No baker will further employ such a one.
[2] Second, anyone who uses a torn sack for sifting, or mixes in unsifted flour, shall pay one Thaler, half to the honorable Hansegraf and half to the apprentices’ chest.
[3] Third, if anyone agrees to work for a baker and does not keep his promise, he shall be employed by no baker for the next three months.
[4] Similarly, a fourth point, whoever promises to work for a master or a baker and does not take his place in the shop shall be liable to pay the latter a whole week’s wages.
Office of the Hansegraf, published on June 17, 1588
Source of original German text: “Pöckenknecht Ordnung (1588),” in Georg Fischer, Volk und Geschichte, Studien und Quellen zur Sozialgeschichte und Historischen Volkskunde: Festgabe dem Verfasser zum 65. Geburtstag dargebracht. Kulmbach, 1962, pp. 309-13.
Translation: Ellen Yutzy Glebe
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